The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between devices and specifically to methods and systems for facilitating improved distribution of service content through unicast and/or broadcast transmissions.
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Further, many such cellular telephones are being manufactured with relatively large increases in computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs.
Currently, there are certain classes of services that depend on unicast communications to provide a per user customized service. These services may be nominally entertainment based and file delivery based. Further, this type of service may become constrained by network congestion and thereby potentially reducing a user's enjoyment/use of the service. Network congestion can be an issue for services that provide per user real time unicast customized services. The network may either provide too low a throughput or too great a delay, even with an adaptive streaming solution such as dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH), to provide even a lowest grade of service.
Further, content available through an entertainment based service may be constrained by various digital rights management (DRM) agreements. As a result, using DRM is more expensive for a service provider, which must pay licensing fees under these DRM agreements. In addition, implementing the key management aspects of DRM, including establishment of chain of trust on the device, can further increase the service provider's costs.
Thus, improved apparatus and methods for reducing network congestion while maintaining an individualized service are desired.